Poems

Find and share the perfect poems.

Four Slateku

What is the point of travel
For a DeafBlind person
Other than the food the people the shops
And all that

*
 
Part one young
Question mother father
Know right name
Work some day

*

The mutant four-fingered carrot
Is in the pot and growing
Sweeter as it relaxes
Its grip

*

When we say good morning
In Japanese Sign Language
We pull down a string
To greet each other in a new light

John Lee Clark is the author of the essay collection Where I Stand: On the Signing Community and My DeafBlind Experience (Handtype Press, 2014).

Themes

About this Poem

“Slateku is a form I invented. It’s simple: It is a poem that is written, or could have been written, with the classic Braille slate and stylus. The slate has four rows of twenty-eight cells each. Some think of it as writing backward, pressing down right to left to make dots stand up on the other side, but I think of it as writing forward in a different direction. The second slateku in this series is something only Braille readers can fully appreciate!”

—John Lee Clark

Sign up for Poem-a-Day

More by this poet

The Mansion

It all changed
when the daughters of men
began giving birth to us.

We had no hair.

Our mothers held us
against their thick hair.

It tickled our throats
as we suckled.

There were more and more and more
of us.

The hairy said,
“We want your smooth.”

We said,
“We want your hairy.”

We all wept
because no one
had what they wanted.

We escaped more and more
to the beach.

The hairy hated water
but it was different for us.

John Lee Clark

2020

At the Holiday Gas Station

Near the Naked Juices I passed
A man my fingers walking
Across his back he turned and held up
A box said what
Might this be I said oh
You’re tactile too what’s your name
He said William Amos Miller I said
I thought you were born in 1872 he said so